


all that's left is you and me and the ruined world

by youremyqueen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ADWD spoilers, Angst, F/M, Implied Torture, Imprisonment, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremyqueen/pseuds/youremyqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is the Queen in the North, flowing and strong and proud, and he is a mess on the floor, thin and bone-sharp and ragged.</p><p>Written for the angst-fest at gameofships on lj, prompts were: <i>broken vows, starved,</i> and <a href="http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b371/mrstater/Shipwrecks%20Prompts/wolves.jpg">this image</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all that's left is you and me and the ruined world

She is the Queen in the North, flowing and strong and proud, and he is a mess on the floor, thin and bone-sharp and ragged. He calls her _Sansa_ \- only without the smile now - and calls himself _Reek_. She insists he call her _Your Grace_ , insists that he call himself by his own name. She calls him _Turncloak_.

 

\---

 

"You killed my brothers," she yells at him, once, after weeks and weeks of avoiding his cell, of avoiding her advisor's insistence that she have him beheaded. He doesn't respond - doesn't deny it, but doesn't affirm it, either. She keeps yelling, her voice scrapes raw through her throat - Stannis' army could arrive any day and she needs to yell at _someone_ , and it might as well be him. Yelling at him doesn't make her feel guilty. Yelling at him makes her feel just, makes her feel strong. Stronger than she knows herself to truly be.

There are tears streaming down her face, freezing cold and sharp against her cheeks, by the time that she realizes that her yells are falling on deaf ears. He's fallen asleep to the sound of her voice - to the sound of her damning, accusatory screams.

Sansa's words shake and die in her throat. She sits down on the bench outside of his cell and just cries harder. Theon continues to sleep.

 

\---

 

"The North demands justice, Your Grace," one of them tells her at the next council meeting. "Let me be the one to give it to them. Let me kill the traitor."

Her hands shake in her lap, but she doesn't let it show, and her voice is strong and sure when she speaks. "My father always told my brothers that the one who passes the sentence should be the one to swing the headsman's sword." The tired, wrinkled faces of those amassed around her go blank, and Sansa resists the urge to smile at that.

"Yes, Your Grace," someone finally ventures, "but that is different."

"Because I am Eddard Stark's daughter, and not his son?" Sansa asks, not to him in particular, not to any of them. She knows the answer, and she wants no response. If she were a son, if she were Robb - and _oh_ , how she wishes she were Robb - Theon's head would already be on a pike at the gates. As it stands, she is the Queen in the North, and though she aches to kill the man in the cell, she will not do it.

And she will not have anyone else do it, either.

 

\---

 

He reminds her of home, more than any of the half-repaired, burned up stones of Winterfell do. He reminds her of Robb, or their shared smiles, of their boyish jests and the way she had at once looked down on such childishness, while simultaneously yearning to be a part of it.

But Robb is dead, and Winterfell is half a ruin, and _he killed her brothers_.

 

\---

 

She goes to his cell often now, and brings a small, sharp knife every time. Comes close to using it once, but the his eyes flutter open, and he stares up at her, at the knife poised at his throat, and then smiles softly. He looks at her with relief, and she almost thinks she hears, _"thank you,"_ whispered from the edges of his toothless, ruinous mouth, and Sansa scrambles away, feeling sick and weak and angry.

Robb would be able to do it - but Robb is dead, and Sansa is all that is left.

 

\---

 

Later, in her bedchamber, Sansa considers that Arya would probably be able to do it, as well.

And that Arya is probably dead, too.

 

\---

 

Stannis' army is days away, and the war councils go on for hours at a time, one battle plan bleeding into another. And Sansa is afraid, but Sansa speaks loudly, and stands tall, and shows no fear to any of them. Not a single shred of it through-out the day.

She spends the night sobbing outside Theon's cell, yells, "You killed my brothers," again and again, so loudly that she thinks it must echo through the whole of the castle, and out into the forests, and across the Narrow Sea. Theon doesn't sleep through her pain this time, but he doesn't respond, either, just listens to her every accusation and seems to accept them all. She once tells him, voice choked with emotion - with overwhelming hatred that is less for him and more for the entirety of the war, for everything else that ever was, for everything she has lost - that Robb's death had been his fault, that if Theon hadn't betrayed him, it would have all gone differently.

He seems to accept that, too. Sansa doesn't truly believe it, and it hurts to say, but the words spill out anyway, quick as her tears.

 

\---

 

It's the night before the battle, and Sansa spends half the night kneeled in front of the Heart Tree, praying to whichever God will listen, and the other half outside of Theon's cell again. She doesn't yell, this time, doesn't say anything at all. Isn't even there, so much as she is lost in her thoughts, in her memories of the time before. 

She has one flash, a memory long buried and forgotten, of Robb's fingers tangled in Theon's hair, of them pressed against a tree and laughing, and smiling, and jesting as they were always wont to do. And kissing.

If Robb were here, Robb would know what to do. So that night Sansa goes into Theon's cell for the first time in a long time, and kneels down beside where he is huddled - a thin, frightened _wreck_ of a man - and she still can't quite bring herself to kill him, so she presses her lips to his instead. They're shriveled and chapped and frozen, and he doesn't move an inch when she presses against him. He smells, not half so bad as he had when they'd first brought him here, but it's still not pleasant, still uncomfortable and terrifying and _cold_.

One of his butchered hands comes up to press against her arm, and she reels back and away at that, falling to the filthy floor, dirtying her dress beyond measure - but that doesn't seem to matter so much, at this point.

"Sansa," he whispers, in a voice harsh with disuse, and she snaps at him to call her _Your Grace_ , before stumbling out of the cell and locking it tight behind her.

She shivers and shakes her way back up to her chambers, but she doesn't cry at all that night.

 

\---

 

They win the battle, sending Stannis back to regroup for the time being, and the first place Sansa goes when she gets the news is to Theon's cell. She has the strangest desire to thank him, for she knows not what. Thinks she'd be better off yelling at him some more. Instead, she compromises, and says nothing.

 

\---

 

"You killed my brothers," she says again, weeks later. She still hasn't allowed anyone to kill him, and she still sort of wants to do it herself.

This time, he speaks. This time, he says, "No. I didn't."

 

\---

 

He calls her _Sansa_ , and she doesn't mind that so much anymore. She calls him _Theon_ just as often as she does _Turncloak_ , and he disputes neither title.

The word _Reek_ , rarely, if ever, comes up.


End file.
